


Independent 24 - the Final Cut

by Aadler



Series: Independent Stories [24]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 15:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8018923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aadler/pseuds/Aadler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season: Second (<i>Buffy</i>)<br/>Spoiler(s): “Passion” (S2-17)<br/>Teaser: A rescue that doesn’t go exactly as planned, with more than a few unexpected lessons learned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  
**Banner by[SRoni](http://sroni.livejournal.com)**

**the Final Cut**  
by Aadler  
 **Copyright August 2016**

* * *

Disclaimer: Characters from _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

* * *

This story was done for the 2016 round of [Summer of Giles](http://summer_of_giles.livejournal.com).

* * *

Jenny had stopped shivering, or seemed to have done, but Giles was taking no chances. “Here,” he said, setting the hot tea in front of her. “And I’ve brandy available, if you’d like me to add a bit.”

She didn’t answer immediately, but took a first long sip, her hands wrapped about the cup to soak up additional warmth. There were dark circles under her eyes and stress lines at her mouth that made her look older. He had been prepared for far worse, feared for worse beyond his imagining, but he still felt a fresh spasm of rage at the sight. Really, he’d have thought that would have been long since exhausted by the hours of dread, and then frantic planning, and then determined action, capped finally by near-paralyzing relief. It was still there, however … and soon, very soon, he would have to turn his not inconsiderable intellect and imagination to finding a means of making Angelus pay properly for what he’d done …

Jenny set the cup down carefully, her hands shaking only a bit, her wrists still showing the marks of the shackles from which they’d freed her. She tried to speak, but her throat caught; clearing it, she managed what was barely more than a hoarse whisper: “How long?”

“How long did they have you?” Giles gently brushed a few strands of her hair away from her cheek, rejoicing once again at the simple fact of her being alive. “Somewhat over a day would be my guess, but that would depend on when you were taken. I didn’t even know of it till the following morning, when I found the message from Angelus; but, even then, it seemed to me that you must have been captured earlier, during the dark hours, and I hadn’t seen you since before school let out Friday.”

Jenny nodded, her eyes momentarily very far away. “It felt like … but I knew it couldn’t be.” She shook her head, the movement overriding and masking what might have been a shudder. “Time was … blurred. I faded in and out, even when I was conscious I wasn’t always _there —”_ She shook her head again. “I don’t know if Drusilla caused that, with her little … chats … or if my mind called it up as a defense mechanism against her. But it felt … it felt like longer than just a day.”

Giles had already taken pains to ascertain her physical condition (little damage, actually, past the cold from the bare stones gradually leaching away most of her body heat, and even that seemed more from indifference than deliberate cruelty), but his gaze sharpened now. “What did she do?” he asked, keeping his tone even with brutal self-control.

“She just talked,” Jenny said. Her voice was perhaps a bit stronger now. “Rambling, mostly, and giggling, and what might have been bits of prophecy but I couldn’t tell because they were coming from the lips of a  _lunatic.”_ She looked to Giles with a horror only partially softened by crushing weariness. “We already knew she was crazy, but you can’t know what it’s like till she’s with you. She isn’t lost in madness, Rupert, she _belongs_ there. It’s her element, like the sea to sharks. Insanity is home to her, it’s reality, and she’s so … so casual about it all, it’s like the insanity is going to swallow you as well.” She stopped, and Giles had the impression she might have lost color if she hadn’t been already at the limits of that. “Sometimes … I think sometimes she did try to pull me in with her. She’d stare at me and stroke my temples and sort of croon, _Be in my eyes …”_ It was unquestionably a shudder this time, and her lips were pinched. “I think that may be why I was … _gone_ for so much of the time, because part of me was convinced that if I ever let her draw me in, I’d never come out again.”

Giles placed his hands gently over hers on the small tea table. “You’re safe now,” he told her. “We got you out, and I shan’t let you come to harm again.”

He knew, and knew that she knew, that he could enforce no such guarantee. He meant it all the same, and could see that she drew comfort from it.

At the moment his thoughts began to turn darker, Jenny seemed to feel it, for she said, “Angel … Angelus … he left me alone. Drusilla wouldn’t let him near me, so it was … everything I went through, it was all her.” She drew one of her hands away from his to pick up the teacup again. “He was angry, I think, and trying not to show it, but she was … very firm. It’s hard to imagine — or at least it used to be, for me — but I think he’s actually a little afraid of her.”

Just now, Giles had no desire even to try to imagine it. He said only, “He must have been, to allow her to take his, his prey from him.”

“No,” Jenny said. “She wouldn’t let _him_ take me from _her.”_ She looked up, letting her eyes meet his. “It was Drusilla who kidnapped me from the school.”

“Truly?” Giles said, startled. He’d been so certain … because Angelus was the one given to such games, because it was he who had left the taunting challenge, and set the trap, the whole thing had seemed so _much_ like him …

“I think he was planning to do it himself,” Jenny said. “I … I can’t really remember, things all run together, but from things he said I think she warned him about what I was planning, and then decided to … to intervene herself, while he was still gloating over the possibilities of what he might do to me. Like I said, I believe he was angry at her, but then he pushed it back and smiled and said he’d just use me as bait, then, while she played with me.”

“Yes,” Giles agreed. “He did that indeed.”

“And …” Jenny’s eyes were haunted. “When he said that, part of me wondered if I could make them kill me, so they wouldn’t _have_ me as bait … but you wouldn’t have known, you’d have come ahead anyway, so then I started thinking it would have been better if she’d just killed me at the school and left my body … or if Angelus had made it there ahead of her, _he’d_ have never been able to resist a bit of slaughter —”

The burst of hatred Giles felt, even at the thought, told him that her … ‘wishful thinking’, there … wouldn’t have helped. Knowing her dead, he’d have come anyway, with fire and fury and devastation, no inhibitions or limitations because he’d not have cared about the consequences. Kerosene bombs, _actual_ bombs … hell, he’d have razed the factory with a bloody _bulldozer_ and a flamethrower at his side —! “Well, you’re alive,” he told her, squeezing the hand he still held. “And, all things considered, I believe I prefer it that way.”

It was the kind of stereotypical British understatement that would have had her teasing him in the past, and he’d deliberately offered the opening so she could do exactly that. She just looked at him, however, through those bruised eyes, and said simply, “You came for me.”

“I did,” Giles acknowledged. “And successfully, for which I am quite, quite thankful.”

She sat back in the armchair and closed her eyes as if strength were draining out of her. “I’ll have to give Buffy my thanks. Or have you do it, if she’s still not willing to speak to me.”

“Buffy —” Giles cleared his throat. “Buffy was, was not involved in this venture.”

Jenny’s eyes opened. “What?” she said; and then, “But … then, how?”

“I had help,” Giles said, and sighed. “Decidedly … unconventional help.”

*               *               *

“Can you explain to me again why we’re doing this?” Xander complained to Giles, hefting the double-bladed axe with a meaningful glance at the third member of their party. “Because I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea that you actually think you can trust this character.”

“Oh, _that_ wouldn’t be wise at all,” Ethan said with an oily smile. “And I’d say there’s little chance that Rupert trusts me the least bit. On the other hand, I  _have_ managed to acquire an entertaining collection of useful skills. Not that you’re likely to be familiar with the concept of being useful.”

“Shut up, Ethan,” Giles said, in a manner that suggested the response was all but automatic by now. To Xander he went on, “It’s true, though, that his, er, eclectic knowledge base, added to my own, should offer us better odds of navigating whatever set of snares Angelus has prepared. And I do wish you’d allow us to hazard this on our own.”

“Angel doesn’t know diddly about magic,” Xander shot back. “If you’re right about this being a bunch of mystical booby-traps, he’d have had to contract it out.” His eyes rested on Ethan with what, while less than full-on hostility, held no slightest trace of regard. “And guess who’s the most likely candidate for a job like that?”

“And if that were the case,” Ethan answered cheerfully, “then I’d be absolutely the _ideal_ person to bring along. I’d know exactly where everything was and exactly how to disarm it all, plus I’d get the delightful bonus of turning my coat on my employer after taking his money.” He sighed theatrically. “Alas, not so, which means I’ll have to work my way through with just my wits. Got plenty of those, fortunately … unlike, say —”

“Shut up, Ethan. No, Xander, I know his style, and the traces I could detect are nothing like the techniques he customarily uses; and, believe me, he never could resist signing his work.” The quick, dismissive assessment Giles directed at Ethan was, all the same, more nearly neutral than Xander’s had been. “You’re both correct, I’d be a fool to trust him. In this particular instance, however, I do think he’s telling the truth.”

Xander shook his head doggedly. “Even if he is, this is a guy who’ll double-cross you in a heartbeat, just for giggles.”

Ethan laughed aloud. “That does sound like a treat, doesn’t it? Why, I’m getting a warm glow just from imagining the look on his face.” His smile was amused and confident. “But, however tasty a beautifully timed betrayal can be, it doesn’t compare to the delicious prospect of actually having Rupert in my debt. So I’ll play along, never fear; this one’s just too good to lose.”

“Shut up, Ethan. Xander, I am set on this course. Whatever you may believe, my own survival is not meaningless to me, and I am soberly convinced that my odds are better with Ethan than without. There is no need for you also to be at risk, however.” He stepped closer, and his voice dropped to a murmur. “And if I should fail here, if I don’t return, Buffy will _need_ you to help her face Angelus —”

“Forget it.” Still a boy, well short of full adulthood, Xander nonetheless spoke with the unshakeable finality of a Spartan at Thermopylae. “I’m with you that this wouldn’t be a good one for Buffy — it’s a trap, we know it’s a trap, Angel isn’t even trying to _hide_ that it’s a trap, and all his traps are gonna be primed for a Slayer — but she can’t afford to lose you, and I know you have to do this, so let’s get to it.” He had been forceful, defiant, but now Xander, too, spoke as quietly as Giles had done, something between just the two of them. “I don’t have to survive. _Buffy_ has to survive, and you have to be there to see that she does. And if all I am is cannon fodder to make that happen, then that’s what I’ll be.”

Giles felt his throat tighten. “You … underestimate yourself, I think,” he said at last.

“Whatever.” Xander turned away. “So are we gonna do this, or what?”

Ethan was watching them, one eyebrow raised in sardonic mirth. His lips curved again in that characteristic smirk, and Giles snapped, “Shut up, Ethan.”

Derelict in the protective sunlight, the abandoned factory lay at the end of one of Sunnydale’s less respectable roads. Giles had made sure they were well distant for their final preparations, for he had some understanding of how keen vampire hearing could be, but at least during the day, outside, they needn’t fear any of the undead creeping up on them. Now the three men turned together, and began walking toward the arena where their trials were to take place.

*               *               *

“Wait a minute,” Jenny said, sitting up. “Ethan? Ethan Rayne? What on earth moved you to call in _that_ slimy son of a bitch? And how could you ever believe he’d _want_ to help you, even if he actually had anything to offer?”

Ah. Yes. With dire necessity mandating desperate means, and the multitude of his personal memories of Ethan, Giles had somehow forgot that Jenny herself had emphatic reasons to hold a grudge. “Ethan is in fact quite capable, in his own … irredeemable, calamitous way. And our history together is, er, complex, and I’d been trying to keep track of him so I knew he was nearby somewhere. I was confident that his admittedly warped priorities would allow me to call on him for aid — the simple fact that I was asking for help from _him,_ of all people, would be a triumph he could never pass up — so I sent up a spell flare of a type I knew would catch his attention. And when his curiosity brought him in —” Giles paused, coughed. “I … begged. Abjectly, hating every moment and knowing he’d see my mortification as the perfect icing on the cake.”

“Ethan Rayne,” Jenny said again, shaking her head. “Oh my goddess. And Xander … Rupert, how could you bring _Xander_ into a nightmare like this?”

“Xander gave me no choice,” Giles said with some dryness. “Jenny, you must understand the, the entire situation. Angelus left me a message, dropped it through the letter slot of my front door: _If you want your sweetie, send the Slayer in after her. She’ll be somewhere in the factory … and, who knows, if you get her back quick enough, she might even still be sane._ ” Giles stopped, drew a measured breath. “I didn’t know how long the message had been there before I discovered it, how long you’d been captive without my knowing it. And he’d also included a … portrait of you, a pencil sketch. He’s an accomplished artist, I must admit; I could quite clearly see the terror in your face.”

Jenny’s lips moved without any sound emerging, her complexion even more bloodless than before, and the teacup jittered in her hands.

“I couldn’t reach Buffy,” Giles went on. “No answer on her phone when I called, no one at home when I went there, and then I remembered she’d said something about accompanying her mother out of town.” He looked down at his hands, lest his eyes waver if he let them meet Jenny’s. “I couldn’t reach her, and I couldn’t wait — for all I knew, Angelus had already begun vivisecting you at leisure — so I drew Ethan in and convinced him to lend me his assistance. And, while we were in my office trying to thrash out a quick plan of action, Xander came to the library on some trivial errand and overheard us, and insisted on including himself.”

Jenny had seemed to shrink into herself while he was speaking, but now she said, “You shouldn’t have let him do that, Rupert. He had no business being involved in something like that, not … not for me.”

Giles shook his head ruefully. “I  _didn’t_ let him, but he refused to be excluded. Xander can, can be rather more stubborn than you would expect. He gets … this _look_ in his eyes, sometimes.” Giles could tell that his voice and expression had gone sober. “It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, there’s no moving him. You’d have to kill him first … and, in all honesty, I’m not altogether certain that even _that_ would stop him.”

Jenny’s emotional state had been oscillating ever since Giles had got her back to his flat, got her warmed up in the tub and then into the sitting room with his bathrobe to preserve however much modesty might concern her: too drained by her ordeal for any activity, too keyed-up, still, to relax. Another swing had swept over her while he spoke, and now she was fighting tears. “I still … still can’t get past Ethan Rayne,” she said, hiccupping slightly in her sudden distress. “I mean, it  _worked,_ I can see that. You made it work, you won. But I still don’t understand. How could you take that kind of risk? why _him?!”_

Giles allowed himself a grim chuckle. “I was just as appalled as you by Xander’s insistent inclusion of himself in this enterprise. I would have kept him out if I could … though, now it’s all done, it appears fortunate that I was unable to do so. As for Ethan, however: his character is even more deplorable than you’ve had occasion to appreciate, but there were still three specific reasons that I believed — and still do — that calling him in was the right choice.

“Foremost, of course, was that he had skills that I needed. In my first hasty reconnoiter of the factory —” (Within a half-hour of discovering the message from Angelus, and only the most savage discipline had kept him from plunging inside. He had wanted to, so desperately, he would have willingly died to save her; but merciless logic had prevailed, for impetuosity would inevitably have meant his dying without accomplishing anything.) “— I could tell that the magical traces I detected were of a type Ethan had worked with before, though he had come to prefer and enjoy more devious means. With his knowledge and talents, it seemed entirely possible that we could work our way past the dangers ahead of us. At the very least, I had substantially improved our odds.

“Then there was the blunt fact that he was available. He was near, he answered my signal, and — however twisted his reasons — he agreed to join me. He was _there,_ and I deemed it better to move with a less-than-ideal ally, immediately, than to wait for a perfectly briefed and perfectly equipped team to arrive days too late.”

“Okay,” Jenny said, exhaustion and emotional reaction making her voice vague. “I still don’t really understand, but … you got me out, and I guess that’s what it comes down to in the end.”

Giles smiled at her. “I certainly wouldn’t dare complain about the results.”

Jenny nodded, and sipped her tea. Giles stood, went to the kitchen, and returned with a fresh cup, which he set in front of her.

“You said three,” she observed abruptly.

“Yes?” Giles replied, eyebrows up slightly.

“You said there were three reasons Ethan was the right choice, but I’m pretty sure you only gave me two.”

“Ah. Yes. Well.” Giles shrugged, and his smile was relaxed, gentle, and without a whit of warmth. “The third reason I was willing to work with Ethan? I knew that, if he died, I wouldn’t shed a tear for the bastard.”


	2. Chapter 2

“The bad news,” Ethan said, peering at the sparkling disk suspended in the air in front of him, “is that it appears we were enveloped by a Deccam involution moments after we stepped into the factory.” He glanced back at them, his smile showing real pleasure. “The good news? Vampires find a Deccam to be thoroughly inhospitable, so we’ll not need to worry about them while we’re still inside. Not that there won’t be other things to watch for, of course.”

The walls around them were too even, too sharply delineated, the cracks repeating a bit too regularly, and the sunlight coming through the outer windows had a peculiar flatness. They had immediately felt the unreality of it all, and paused to assess their status. “Great,” Xander said tightly. “And you’re supposed to be our trap-whisperer? What we’ve got here is a pratfall in the first three steps.”

“Had you ever even _heard_ of a Deccam involution before I named it?” Ethan asked Xander, still smiling. “I barely have, it’s a very obscure application of Iritulian energies. Count on it, you’d have done no better without me, and at least I have some idea what we’re dealing with.” He dismissed the hovering disk, which promptly faded away, and swiveled to face them. “To begin with, this isn’t so much a physical location as a projection of certain concepts. It’s a separate environment, simplified in some ways and purified in some. With me along, this is actually a  _better_ place for us to be.”

“Yeah,” Xander said, eyes ceaselessly sweeping their surroundings. “And why do I think I’m hearing the sound of a guy talking out of his ass?”

“He’s, he’s telling the truth, Xander.” Giles, too, was watching out for further surprises. “At least, he seems to be. I know quite a bit about involutions — though not the Deccam variant, I’m afraid — and it matches what he’s saying.” He let his gaze rest on Ethan for a half-second. “So far, at least. My primary concern …” He cleared his throat. “Manifesting a stable Deccam involution is a feat requiring some effort and sophistication. If this is merely the first of the obstacles we’re to overcome, we could be facing … severe difficulties.”

“You know, I don’t think so, Ripper.” Ethan’s drawl was of a type seemingly designed to annoy, but his eyes were bright with interest. “This is too big for something like that, really; or I suppose I should say, too expensive to fritter away as an opening diversion.” He grinned. “I don’t believe this is an obstacle, I think it’s the obstacle course itself.”

Giles felt his eyebrows rising. “That … does seem logical.”

“Guys?” Xander complained, hands white-knuckled on the haft of his weapon. “Explanation?”

“Er, yes, of course.” Giles cradled the crossbow he carried, impatient to proceed but grudgingly recognizing the value of basic operating knowledge. “As Ethan said, an involution is a separate, artificial environment; and the Deccam approach, as I understand it, superimposes that environment over the structure of the underlying reality.” He gestured at the walls around them. “This isn’t truly the factory, but a … pattern, that within the involution serves as a framework. There may be more rooms, additional wings, subterranean sections; various demons or supernatural beasts may have been sent in to await us, or the involution design may create its own perils —” He broke off, for Xander was staring at him, eyes wide and mouth falling open. “I’m sorry, I realize it’s a confusing concept to try and take in without warning —”

“Are you kidding me?” Xander interrupted. “Man, you’re describing DOOM!”

“I —” Giles stopped. “What?”

“It’s a game, a video game.” Xander’s mouth spread in a wide grin. “Few years after its release, the makers open-sourced it so people could create their own levels. I’ve heard of corporate types who used the specs of the building where they worked, so they could spend their lunch hours trashing the offices and blowing away their supervisors in virtual space.” He looked around happily. “So it’s like we’re inside a video game _based_ on the factory. That makes perfect sense!”

Ethan laughed. “You can forget about extra lives or leveling up, but it’s a fair analogy otherwise. And, just as games follow certain conventions and coding styles, I believe the Deccamites had their favorite techniques and habits of approach that I should be able to suss out and exploit.” He tilted his head, considering. “Now that I think of it, I was able to call up that sensing pane awfully easily. I wonder …”

He held his hands out, palms upward, as if balancing something unseen, and frowning slightly in concentration. Ghostly green flames appeared about his palms, flaring and subsiding as he twirled and shaped them. “Yes!” he cried in triumph. “I knew it, magic is stronger here. There’s no telling how much I can do, this place is _brilliant —!”_

Xander leaped at him with the battle axe raised overhead, and Ethan yelped and fell down as he tried to dodge from the boy’s path. The axe came down in a full-power two-handed swing, the blade landing with a deep, sickening _chunk!_ in the muscled shoulder of the hairless, blue-skinned creature that had surged around the corner of the ‘factory’ wall on four clawed feet. Its shriek blotted out all other sound, and it tried to swipe at Xander with its good foreleg but missed, lurching offside, as the injured one gave way beneath it. Giles shouldered the crossbow and fired, quarrel all but disappearing into the creature’s chest, and Xander’s next swing split the misshapen skull in a spray of garish brains and shattered teeth.

Ethan had scrambled to his feet, and watched with a slightly stunned expression as Giles calmly reloaded the crossbow and Xander shook thick blood from the blades of the axe. “Nice little demo there, Gandalf,” Xander observed caustically, “but I’m thinking for most things, we’re better off sticking with Sir Hackalot.”

The blue creature was still twitching on the concrete floor, gape-toothed jaws stretching more than halfway around its face; it could, almost certainly, have severed a man’s leg at the thigh with one solid bite. “That was quick action, Xander,” Giles said, “and quite well done. I trust it didn’t touch you?”

“Not even close,” Xander reassured him. “I’m just glad it wasn’t a bunch of smaller ones, ’cause that coulda been nasty.”

“Indeed.” Giles glanced toward Ethan. “Are you ready to proceed? More to the point, can your ever-so-superior knowledge give us at least some warning before the next attack?”

Ethan recovered himself with a shake. “You deal with the uglies that pop up, and I’ll sniff out such spell snares and trapdoors as are built into the fabric here.” He shrugged, and that scoundrel’s smile returned. “After all, it’s my own skin I’m looking out for, too.”

“Yeah, well, try to stay more alert.” Xander’s voice was clipped, and he used one sleeve to blot sweat from his forehead. “I’ll fight whatever I have to, but I’m not crazy about jumping in to risk myself just because you can’t be bothered to look around every now and then.”

“I shall endeavor to be vigilant,” Ethan said with mock, pompous resolution. Then his eyes cut momentarily toward Giles, his smile broadened into something close to a leer, and he added, “But … do be careful with that axe, Eugene.”

Xander stopped with a  _What the_ **hell?** look on his face, Giles rolled his eyes, and Ethan cackled with glee.

*               *               *

Jenny’s expression was doubtful. “Was that … supposed to actually mean something?”

Giles sighed. “It’s the title of a Pink Floyd song,” he explained. “I chatted up one of their roadies once, checking possibilities, and then tried to tell the story when I’d had too much to drink. Ethan insisted ever after that I’d claimed to have _toured_ with the band, and he’d work song titles into conversation just to twit me.” He shook his head. “I thought he’d given it up years ago for more sordid amusements, but perhaps he was feeling nostalgic.”

Jenny nodded slowly; her eyelids were drooping, but genuine rest still eluded her. “I didn’t even know he’d been there, or Xander either. I remember your voice — I think — but everything else was just … jangling and fuzz. I don’t know if I’ll ever get those memories back.” She reached for the second teacup with determined steadiness. “I don’t know if I want to.”

It was true, she’d been somewhere between comatose and delirious when they found the cell where she’d been chained, and she had dissolved into weeping when he spoke to her, clinging to him and burying her face in his shoulder like a frightened child. “Well, once we were out, I brought you here on my own. I had some sense already of what you would probably need, you see, and … er … was rather certain you wouldn’t want an audience.”

Meaning, for the hot bath he had used to restore her core temperature. He’d left her clothing for later laundering, unless she preferred that he simply drop the garments into the rubbish bin, or burn them outright. “You were dead-on there,” she agreed, and settled back in the armchair. “Xander would have been embarrassed even if he wasn’t in the room with us, and Rayne would have made a show of ogling me just for the pleasure of being offensive.” She took a sip from the cup, and another. “That’s if he’d been around, I mean. I don’t suppose there’s any chance he got killed during the big expedition?”

“Well,” Giles said with calculated nonchalance, “now that you mention it —”

Jenny stared at him, owl-eyed, her mouth forming an ‘O’ of surprise. “Rupert … are you serious? You wouldn’t tease me about something like that, would you?”

Well: grudges, indeed. Jenny’s possession by Eyghon, while it  _had_ been caused by Ethan’s selfishness and disregard for others, had never been his actual intention, and after the demon’s expulsion, with Jenny safe again, Giles had simply added the incident to the catalogue of sins for which the man must someday answer. Clearly, the matter had been quite a bit more personal for his accidental victim. “I’m not simply teasing you,” he assured her. “He really … that is to say … and, yes, there was some satisfaction there … but then, my own feelings about it all were rather muddled and conflicting …” He ground to a halt, pulled himself together. “It’s difficult to sum up quickly, but the entire situation subsequently became rather convoluted, in ways we’d certainly never expected —”

*               *               *

Giles had been correct; there were additional areas in this ‘factory’, higher and lower levels that went beyond the original, warrens and labyrinths scattered with hostile spells and organisms. And Ethan had been proven right about his ability to anticipate and work through the spell-traps, while — unexpectedly — Xander’s video-game familiarity had him attuned to the most probable locations and timing for the appearance of living (or quasi-living) adversaries. More than that, Ethan’s dismissive crack about leveling up had been found to be not completely true: whenever he successfully disarmed or diverted one of the spell-traps, the result was an increase in the range and control of the mystical abilities he could manifest here; Xander, likewise, seemed to become quicker and more skilled each time he killed one of the several different types of creature that burst in sporadically to attack; and Giles himself, who alternated physical combat with thaumaturgical support for Ethan, found himself performing rather better than usual in both areas.

Ethan was working to unseal one of the doors just now, hovering in lotus position about five feet above the floor while he delicately manipulated the runes set into the upper corner of the frame. “You know,” he observed, “I’m beginning to get a sense of the mind behind this baroque little scenario. Tell me, Ripper, is there a fellow in this town who helps would-be wizards with their magic? building it up and feeding from it at the same time?” He nullified one set of runes, chuckled in satisfaction, and glide-floated to the next cluster. “Chap I’m thinking of favors a low profile, keeps the entrance to his little lair invisible and shifts it about now and then to discourage unwelcome company. Ringing any bells?”

“There have been rumors,” Giles replied, holding the crossbow at ready and watching one sector of the corridor while Xander kept an eye in the other direction. “What I heard sounded more than slightly unsavory, but not particularly threatening. Do you think this is his handiwork?”

“Maybe,” Ethan said, a softly glowing baseball-sized sphere providing illumination as he worked. “He plays around with the kind of little gimcracks I’ve been seeing here, sort of as a hobby, and he’ll sell them sometimes if the mood strikes him. Setting up a little pocket murderworld as a hamster-wheel for a Slayer, now, that’s a bit more ambitious than his usual, but the basic brush-strokes I’m seeing do remind me of him.”

“Very well,” Giles said. “If you’re correct about the author, is that to our advantage, or will there be cause for concern?”

“Actually, the more I see, the more promising it looks.” Ethan finished with the locking runes, unfolded his legs to put his feet back on the floor. “Even if he reproduced the overall Deccamite structure well enough, he didn’t put his best work into the trim.” He smiled. “Mind you, we may run across the stray Easter egg here and there as a whimsical surprise, but on the whole I’d say he phoned this one in.”

It was a flash of the Ethan that Giles had once known, the man who took genuine pleasure in working through an interesting problem. The moment of not-yet-formed camaraderie, or at least recognition, was burst as Xander called, “Is that door ready to open? ’cause a moment like that is when you have to watch for attack from behind you _and_ ahead of you, and I want to make sure we’re ready.”

He was down to his undershirt now, the horrendous paisley monstrosity he had been wearing upon their arrival having been abandoned as too shredded for further utility; a single torn strip, worn as a headband, was the only remnant. Layered in grime and sweat, his arms and chest spackled with the blood (or closest analogue) of the creatures he had been fighting, he looked grim and determined and vaguely brassed-off and utterly alarming. In the parlance of his peers, the class clown had left the building.

“Oh, there’s an easy enough way to address that little issue,” Ethan said lightly. “How’s this: we pull open the door, and very quickly shove you in there ahead of us, and then stand back to see if anything jumps out and starts biting —?”

“Shut up, Ethan,” Giles said. “Yes, Xander, we’re prepared to proceed. Everyone ready? Very well, on three: one, two …”

His back to the corridor wall, Xander faced the door, axe poised, while Giles split his attention between the door and the corridor on his side; half-facing the other way, and with flames swirling from his upturned hands, Ethan shoved the door open with a quick kick, stepping back —

Nothing appeared from any direction. “Dark,” Xander commented, trying to peer through the doorway, muscles bunched to strike with the axe on an instant’s notice. “Dark is usually not a good thing.”

“Allow me.” Ethan let the mage-flame subside in his right hand, and used it to form one of the glowballs and send it drifting in through the doorway. It brightened as it floated in, and all three could see that the revealed room appeared to be empty, about forty feet by thirty, with a corresponding door on the far side.

“Traps?” Giles asked.

“Not picking up any,” Ethan replied. “Of course, we know that sometimes we have to get a lot closer to tell. We’ve done okay so far, though, and —”

“And,” Xander interjected, “I’m definitely hearing something from off _that_ away, so it’s probably not a great idea to stay hanging around out here.” He stepped forward, adding, “Don’t forget to look up. Sometimes they hide high.”

The three men filed inside, spreading out and surveying their surroundings; Giles closed the door behind them and, after a second or so of consideration, set the bolt, for he too could now hear whatever was making its way up the corridor. “Best not dawdle,” Ethan observed, stepping ahead briskly. It was unquestionably a risk, but so might be not moving quickly enough, and at bottom the goal was still to find Jenny, which they couldn’t delay too long …

“Wait,” Ethan said, holding up one hand just before they reached the center of the room. “There’s something —”

It was already too late, Giles and Xander had reached his side even as he began to voice the warning. Two or three steps ahead of them, something rose from the floor in the room’s center, ten feet wide and moving upward as smoothly and quietly as the power window on an automobile: a wall, no, a pane of glass, no, a  _mirror._ It reached the ceiling and stopped, the men looking from their reflections to one another as they started to back away; then the surface of the mirror misted in a cobwebbing of tiny cracks, and the glass collapsed to the floor in a shower of fragments that melted into nothingness even as they landed —

The reflections remained, however, and Giles, Ethan, and Xander found themselves facing … Giles, Ethan, and Xander.

The tableau held for only a frozen instant that felt like much, much longer. Then the face of the Giles across from Giles twisted into an ugly mask of malice and he raised his crossbow, the other Xander began to draw back his axe while his visage fell into that same expression of virulent hatred … and the Xander to Giles’s far right leaped forward on a diagonal, ignoring his counterpart and passing in front of Ethan and Giles himself to slam into the other Giles in a driving tackle as he shouted, _“Switch right! Switch right!”_

There was no time to understand or even to think, and yet miraculously he and Ethan responded correctly as if by some pre-existing plan; Giles fired at the other Ethan with a reflexive snap-shot from the crossbow, then launched himself at the man in seamless follow-up as his chosen target threw up a hasty shield to deflect the shot; Ethan, meanwhile, blasted fire at the other Xander, who likewise had to jump out of the way. Then there was no time to track anyone else’s actions, Giles had his hands full with his own foe.

Ethan had never been much of a direct fighter, but this one wasn’t even trying to fight, he dodged and twisted and scampered in every direction, meanwhile protesting, “Hold on, Ripper, wait up, wait just a bloody _minute —!”_ Giles wasn’t having any of it, he knew Ethan needed a few seconds to call up the magefire and he wasn’t about to let this one have the time, he struck with the stock of the crossbow and other-Ethan dodged again with a yelp. “Just hold _still,_ you bastard,” Giles panted; he had to finish quick here, kill this thing and go help Xander —

The Ethan he was chasing slipped to one side and stuck out a foot to trip him — seriously? — and Giles went staggering as helplessly as any schoolboy on the playground. His foe raised his hands, the pale green fire surging up again … and ducked out of the way as Giles hurled the spent crossbow at him, and the flame streaked past Giles — not even close, clearly not even trying, what was the man _about —?_

A scream from behind him jerked Giles’s gaze around; there, the other Giles, the wrong one, was beating at his blazing clothes as they burned around him. Behind the man, Xander stepped around to get a better angle, and the shrieks cut off as the axe fell with a butcher-block sound. Xander looked around and saw Giles, looked at the other pair still struggling. Then he bent to pick up the still-primed crossbow of the dead Giles, took careful aim, and sent a quarrel directly into the heart of the Xander who was energetically trying to strangle the original Ethan.

 _“Christ!”_ Ethan said, jumping back as his adversary collapsed, lifeless. He looked from the dead Xander to the living one, several times, for once at a loss for words. “I heard that bloody thing swip right past me,” he said at last. “You could have killed _me!”_

“Hey,” Xander said with a shrug, “I see that one as a win either way.”

He and Giles looked together at the second Ethan, and the first one seemed to recover himself as his eyes took in his doppelgänger. “Well, then, no harm done,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “We’ll just finish off this last one and then move along —”

“Is that necessary?” the other Ethan asked mildly, ignoring the original to speak directly to Giles and Xander. “I’m not your enemy. I  _helped_ you.” He slanted an eyebrow and a half-grin at Giles. “At considerable difficulty, I might point out.”

“I … that …” Giles stopped, momentarily at a loss.

“That part did mix me up,” Xander admitted. He stepped over to Giles and the second Ethan, handed Giles the duplicate crossbow, and held the axe in a way that was casual but still ready. “I was fighting the not-Giles, so I knew this had to be the real Giles. I knew _that_ guy was the not-me, ’cause I’m the me-me. So if real-Giles was faced off against this Ethan, he’d pretty much have to be the not-Ethan, but then this Ethan turns away from real-Giles to burn not-Giles …” He shook his head, and asked Giles himself, “Are you sure you didn’t mix up your Ethans?”

“I’m certain,” Giles answered firmly. “This is assuredly the duplicate; I went for him the moment you made your move, never took my eyes off him.”

“He didn’t,” the second Ethan agreed cheerfully. “And wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell him I was on your side.”

The first Ethan stepped up to join them. “Is anybody seriously listening to this bollocks?” he demanded. “Of _course_ I’m the real one, of all the cheek —!”

“Well, now,” the second Ethan said, eyeing his counterpart with a smile. “Aren’t _you_ a handsome bugger?” To Giles he said, “I’m the doppelgänger, all right, won’t try to claim otherwise. But I’m not like those other two there. They wanted to kill you, were _compelled_ to. I’m not.” He favored them with all the amused charm that an Ethan Rayne could bring to bear. “In fact, I’d like to help you on your little rescue safari.”

“You know that look,” the first Ethan said to Giles. “I make sure to be wearing that look when I’m about to set up a new mark for plucking. He’s trying to run a con, surely you can see as much.”

“Yeah, I’m kinda gonna have to go with our Original Asshole on that.” Xander was facing the second Ethan, his grip on the axe now perhaps a bit less relaxed. “The real Ethan Rayne is bad enough, there’s no way I’ll ever trust his evil twin.”

“Really, now? Are you positive you’ve thought this all the way through?” The duplicate Ethan smirked at them, either genuinely enjoying the situation or playing the role perfectly. “Consider the source material, and ask yourselves: between the real Ethan Rayne, and a twisted-mirror double … what makes you so sure _I’m_ the evil one?”


	3. Chapter 3

“Dear God in heaven,” Jenny blurted, surprise momentarily undercutting her determined paganism. _“Two_ Ethan Raynes? This just keeps getting worse!” She shook her head. “I’ll have some of that brandy after all. Suddenly I think I need it.”

Giles fetched it for her, along with a fresh cup of tea. “By that point,” he said, setting the cup in front of her, “I was willing to use any resource I could acquire. I had estimated perhaps twelve hours, probably more, between your capture and my finding of Angelus’s note. Another two hours to scout the factory, send up a flare for Ethan, gather tools and weapons and spell materials, and secure Ethan’s cooperation once he arrived; then another hour of arguing with Xander, adjusting our supplies to accommodate a third member in the party, finalize the basic plan — such as it was — and return to the factory. Add in at least another two hours working our way through the involution before reaching the chamber where we faced our counterparts. By then, I knew you would have been in captivity for eighteen hours or more, and was … increasingly concerned.”

“I know,” Jenny said, and took a long swallow of the spiked tea. “I know. It’s just … at least, with Xander along, the two of you had him outnumbered. Add in _another_ one —”

Giles smiled at that. “Actually, there was little chance of them colluding against us, they seemed more inclined to compete with one another. Honestly, it never would have occurred to me that Ethan could be so _jealous_ of … well, of himself.”

“Makes sense to me,” Jenny muttered. “Mister Center-of-Attention _wouldn’t_ like sharing the spotlight with anyone who had the same-sized ego.”

“It’s a decent theory, I suppose,” Giles said, musing. “At the time, though, it was simply an annoyance that could have become a significant difficulty.”

“I don’t care,” Jenny said, setting herself more snugly into the blanket Giles had brought her. “Not as long as you and Xander got out okay.” She gave him a quick glance. “You both did, right?”

Giles smiled at her. “I can confirm that I did not die at any time in the proceedings. Nor did Xander … this, of course, not including the fate of our mystical duplicates.” That brought a thought, and he added some brandy to his own tea, focusing on the precise, controlled movements to keep his expression from changing. “The immediate peril to us may have been more severe, but Xander and I have suffered considerably greater injury in the past than any we sustained in this particular enterprise. You needn’t concern yourself on that point.”

“Thanks,” Jenny said, “but that brings us back to my earlier concern. Namely, two Ethan Raynes. I’m still trying to get my mind to grasp the thought, and you can’t tell me that wasn’t a complication _you_ could have done without.”

“It was … unwelcome, initially, yes.” Giles sipped at his fortified tea. “In the end, however, I’d have to say it proved to be a fortunate turn for us. There were a few dodgy bits at the beginning, of course, but once we had those sorted it went … more or _less_ smoothly from then on …”

*               *               *

“Take off your shirt,” Xander said as soon as it became clear they wouldn’t be killing or even forcibly separating themselves from the second Ethan Rayne.

At the command, that man regarded him with curiosity rather than defiance, asking mildly, “Why?”

“Staying out of the way of oncoming clichés,” Xander answered. He gestured with the axe. “Off. Now.”

One eyebrow lifted slightly (in query or mockery, or perhaps both), the other Ethan removed the dark red knit shirt, leaving him in a gray sleeveless tee. Xander took the shirt from him and tossed it away over his shoulder. “Okay, then,” he said. “I’m not up for any games of ‘which one is the real one?’, so: our Ethan still has his shirt on. Our guest doesn’t. That’s that.”

The shirtless Ethan smiled. “Ah. I thought perhaps you were choosing this moment to come out of the closet. And then I naturally began to wonder if we could persuade Ripper to join us —”

“Shut _up,_ Ethan!” Giles snapped, and “Hey!” the non-shirtless version objected. _“I’m_ Ethan, you pillock!”

Giles rounded on him. “It’s still the way your smarmy little mind works, so don’t be acting offended.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” that Ethan said. “Any time someone can get under your skin, I’ll cheer for more. But that’s not the point.”

“Nathan,” Xander said.

The others looked at him, Giles and Ethan both saying, “What?”

“Nathan,” Xander repeated. He indicated the double. “Not-Ethan, no-shirt Ethan, maybe even neutral Ethan. Nathan.”

The three men eyed one another, and then not-Ethan smiled. “Hullo, I’m Nathan,” he said to Ethan. “I believe we’ve met?”

Ethan didn’t return the smile. “Feel perfectly free to sod yourself,” he said in answer.

“You _are_ myself,” Nathan observed. “So was that in the way of a proposition —?”

Giles had found that there were times when the best way to deal with Ethan was to ignore him. With two versions on hand, it seemed even more called-for. To Xander he said, “Having us switch opponents was tactically brilliant; even aside from avoiding potential stalemate, you saved us from the ticklish problem of determining, at the end, which of us was the ‘right’ version. How on earth did you formulate such a masterful move on the spur of the moment?”

Xander grinned at him: the familiar Xander, not the one he had just seen kill two men (for a loose definition of ‘men’) in the space of five seconds. “Got it from _Star Trek_ ,” he explained happily. “You know, the ‘That Which Survives’ episode? Three Lee Meriwethers in purple halter tops and harem pants, one each to kill Kirk and McCoy and Sulu, only the guys switch positions so each is facing the woman whose touch _can’t_ kill him? Worked for them, figured it’d work for us.”

Giles closed his eyes briefly. “In those first moments, then, your survival strategy for the three of us hinged on your familiarity with … popular culture?”

Xander nodded, still grinning. “And that doesn’t even count what I learned about fight strategy from _Dragon Ball Z_.”

Giles shuddered. He had no idea what that meant, and no desire to compromise his sweet, sweet ignorance.

“If you two are done cooing at each other,” Ethan — no, Nathan — cut in, “I may have some news for you.”

Giles and Xander turned to him, expressions skeptical. “Yes?” Giles said.

“Ah, _now_ who’s looking with paranoid eyes?” Nathan smiled as Giles stonily refused to wince. “Untwist your pants for a bit, Ripper, this could actually be good for us. The little choose-your-own-adventure scenario we’re in right now? Someone just made an addition to it.”

“Further perils, appended to those we already face?” Giles shook his head. “I fail to see anything encouraging —”

“You wouldn’t,” Nathan interrupted. “You’re not part of the fabric of this place. I am. When it changes — that is, when it’s changed from outside — I feel it, and I just felt something inserted that wasn’t here before.”

The other three traded looks, and Ethan observed, “If he’s telling the truth — and let’s never forget he could very well _not_ be — it could be almost anything. Unlikely to be vampires, of course, this enviro would burn at them about half as bad as sunlight. Demons, though, or any of several different breeds of hellhound, or supernatural beasties primed to hunt us …”

“I don’t think so,” Nathan interjected smoothly. “No guarantees, but … first, it wasn’t a  _thing_ sent here, it was a place, a space, containing something. Second, what was contained: it has a familiar feel to it. Something like you three, in fact.”

“Human?” Giles asked sharply; and then, whisper-soft, “Jenny?”

“So we’re supposed to believe,” Ethan said. He was directly facing his twin, body square-set in the hackles-up bristling he had shown from the beginning, utterly unlike the amused needling that had been his easy response to open hostility from Giles and Xander. “He shows up to kill us, decides to play us instead of going with direct force: this sudden new information has to be a trap. Just another brick in the wall.”

Xander gave him a very nasty grin, looking something like satisfied for the first time. “Dude, even I can see that one was totally feeble. Who _doesn’t_ know that line from the Floyd? You’re getting desperate.”

“We’re in a trap already,” Giles told Ethan steadily. “If Jenny is the bait, that’s where I’ll go, that’s what this has all been _for.”_ To Nathan he added, soft and even, “If she’s not there, if you’re deceiving us from sheer cruelty, I promise you _will_ live long enough to regret it … but only just.”

Nathan grimaced. “I  _told_ you no guarantees,” he said peevishly. “If you don’t believe me, don’t go. If it doesn’t work out, I’d really rather not be blamed for something I didn’t actually have to tell you.”

“Uh, guys —?” Xander prompted, looking around.

“Yes, yes, let’s continue our discussion while we move on.” Giles motioned Nathan ahead (he’d no intention of putting that one at his back), following in a position somewhat behind and to the right that would allow him, with a slight shift, to bring the crossbow to bear on the man if necessary. “Even if you are, indeed, a … less negative version of Ethan, I do find myself wondering what you hope to gain by aiding us.”

Nathan opened the door at the far end of the room, stuck his head out to look both ways, and then stepped out into the new corridor with the others trailing him. “There’s only four things worth chasing after,” he tossed back over his shoulder, suddenly cheerful again. “Sex, profit, survival, and artistic satisfaction.” He waved one hand to take in their surroundings. “You can forget about artistry, here, and the same for profit. Already ruled out sex, more’s the pity —” His voice clearly communicated the leer. “— so that only leaves the one little piggy.” He glanced back at Giles. “I want to live. _Quel surprise,_ right?”

“He’s a game character,” Xander said, a half-second after Giles had recognized what Nathan meant. “He lasts only as long as the game does. But if we leave, if the game ends —”

“Exactly,” Nathan agreed. “This scenario was built for a purpose, and I don’t see its creators keeping it going once it’s fulfilled that purpose or failed to. When it fades out or shuts down, I’d rather be _outside_ where I might have a chance to … keep existing.”

Giles frowned. “You said yourself that you’re part of the fabric of this reality. It seems highly unlikely that the energies maintaining you could continue in the outer world.”

“Yeah,” Xander threw in again. “Like a holodeck character on the _Enterprise_ -D trying to leave the holo chamber. _Poof!”_ He sounded not the least dismayed by the prospect.

“And exactly what energies are maintaining _you_ three?” Nathan asked sharply. “You’re not from here, but you don’t seem to be winking out.” He made a general gesture of frustration. “However I came into being, I  _am_ now, and I’d like to keep doing that.”

“I’m not sure the comparisons balance as simply as that,” Giles said, raising the crossbow to cover a doorway as they passed it. “Xander’s example is crude, but remains pertinent. The involution is, in a sense, contained within our own reality, we merely moved from one level to another. You, on the other hand —”

“— will be trying to do the same in reverse.” Nathan finished. “Yes, I know it’s long odds, but still the only chance I’ve got. I think that, when we’ve found the exit, the three of you can form a kind of containment around me — better if there were five of you, to make a proper pentagram, but the basic theory should hold — to shield me during transition. Once we’re on the other side —”

“Then we’ll have no bloody _use_ for you!” Ethan snarled. “Besides which it’d never work to begin with, the whole thing is sheer bleeding nonsense!”

“So why am I wasting my time on it?” Nathan snapped back. “This is my _life_ here, I’ve no desire to throw it away. And it’s not nonsense, I know everything you do and I have a sense of this place that you _don’t,_ and I’m saying there’s a chance.” He looked to Giles, and his tone turned wheedling. “You were always willing to give the original Ethan another chance, Ripper. Why not do as much for his slightly less unethical twin?”

“Trick,” Xander called from where he was functioning as rear guard. “When the guy who doesn’t _have_ a better nature tries to appeal to yours? definitely a trick.”

Giles sighed. “All the same, it’s true,” he said; then, to Nathan, “If you keep your word, if we live to effect an exit, if the process you’re suggesting turns out in fact to be possible … then we’ll do our best to bring you out safely with us.”

“Speak for yourself!” Ethan spat.

“I speak for us all,” Giles told him coldly. “You agreed to join me in this quest; we are committed together. If you forsake your promise out of spite, _I_  have no more use for _you_ … but you’ll do no such thing, for I won’t allow it.”

For once, Ethan had no ready answer; wisely, Nathan forbore tossing back some _Nyah-nyah!_ comment of his own. After a moment, however, Xander said, “Not sure the world would thank you for doubling its Ethan Rayne infestation, G-Man.”

“Don’t call me that,” Giles said automatically. “And the matter will arise only if we all reach the exit alive, so let’s concentrate on that part for now, shall we?”

“He’ll cozy you along till your guard slips,” Ethan insisted, grim and sullen. “Then he’ll do the dirty on you at the worst possible moment. Just you see.”

Nathan laughed. “If that’s how your mind works, no wonder Ripper thought an adjusted copy of you might be an improvement.”

“Don’t start again,” Giles warned, meaning it for both men. To Nathan he said, “You seem to be leading us in a particular direction. Does that mean you can feel the location of …” He wouldn’t say _Jenny,_ wouldn’t let wild hope compromise his objectivity. “… of the new element?”

“No, I can’t,” Nathan replied. “Sorry. I felt it when it arrived, though, and it was more or less _that_ way —” He pointed. “— and up. It’s not a beacon, if we lose our bearings we’re in hard cheese, but it gives us something to go on.”

“Very well.” It would be difficult _not_ to become disoriented in these featureless rooms and hallways, but still it could be counted as a small advantage to have at least a vague idea of which way they should be going. _That way and up …_ better than they’d had before, and he’d be glad for it.

Nathan gave a little laugh. “And just so you don’t accuse me of leading you into an ambush: the obstacles naturally increase as you get closer to the prize, so you can bet we’ll run into more opposition going this way.”

Which they very quickly did.

*               *               *

Jenny was frowning, either not understanding or simply not certain she _had_ understood properly. At last she said, “They stuck me … inside this, this mystical video-game environment you were fighting your way through? Or was your mirror-Ethan just lying about that part?”

“No, it wasn’t a lie.” Giles placed his hand on hers again. “I don’t mind telling you that I drew considerable strength from that. It was no longer a matter, you see, of working our way through the involution in hope of being able to locate and recover you once we’d found our way out; now, the involution itself was the way _to_ you. It made a difference to me that I … can’t properly express.”

“I can see that,” Jenny agreed. “It’s just, the thing itself doesn’t make sense. To have me in the involution, part of the trap, the _center_ of the trap, I could understand that. But putting me in after you were already inside, I guess I don’t see the point. Is there something I’m missing?”

Giles shook his head, sighed. “I could offer theories, I’m sure. The involution was designed as a set of snares for the Slayer — in fact, Ethan had earlier confirmed that the traps and attackers we had encountered would have subtly and systematically drained away from her the force she used to fight past them — so our presence in her place may have unbalanced the operation in such a way that your insertion was necessary to keep it going. By the same token, the spell-working that pitted us against mirror-images of ourselves: that was a major undertaking, and it may be that you had to be fed in as the price of such a spell … though, of course, your arriving _after_ it would indicate against such an interpretation. It’s even possible that you were in fact prepared or placed in such a way as to _be_ the final trap, and it failed either because our two Ethans nullified the trigger in our approach to your location or because it was designed specifically to be sprung by the proximity of a Slayer.” He shrugged, regarding her with a slight smile. “Ultimately, I suspect the answer is quite a bit more simple than any of those possibilities.”

Jenny nodded understanding. “You mean, Drusilla just did it on a whim. Maybe because she knew something we don’t — she really is psychic, we can’t let ourselves forget that part — or maybe for reasons that wouldn’t make sense to any rational mind.” She hugged herself inside the blanket, seeming both smaller and older. “I’m … I’m terrified of her, Rupert. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop. What if it isn’t over? What if this was … was only the first part of some process too crazy or convoluted for us to follow?” Her voice sunk to a whisper, faint and shaking: “What if she comes for me again?”

“If she does, she will die.” Giles’s tone, in deliberate contrast, was firm and resolute. “Buffy is maintaining overwatch of this flat, and will likewise watch over you when the time comes that you choose to leave. I have a message out to Sam Zabuto, urgently requesting Kendra’s presence here; the danger posed by Drusilla, Spike, and Angelus has gone on long enough, and I mean to bring it to an end.” He leaned toward her, trying to will strength to her through his eyes. “I will _see_ it end, and you will be guarded until I do. On that, you have my sworn word.”

“Oh,” Jenny said. “Okay, then. Thanks.” Then she looked up. “Buffy? So she’s back from that trip with her mother?”

“Er, yes,” Giles said. He looked back to his teacup. “I, I phoned again once I had you secure here, and was able to reach her at that time.”

“Good.” Jenny seemed to … untighten, slightly. “It’s good to know I’m safe.” She settled back again. “I hate having to depend on you, but I’m glad I can.”

“You can,” Giles assured her. “I would … would not let _anything_ come ahead of your safety.”

She nodded, an uneasy but firming calm beginning to replace her earlier fear, and Giles damned himself for the liar he knew himself to be.


	4. Chapter 4

They fought their way upward and forward, against a growing tide of foes. Nathan’s prediction was proven true immediately, the opposition progressively increasing in numbers, variety, and frequency of attack. There were flyers, with a seven-foot span of pterodactyl wings and flexible snake-headed necks, spitting poison and screaming as quarrels and green flame struck them from the air. There were hulking ogres with great spike-studded war clubs, slow and dull-witted but capable of soaking up enormous damage before reluctantly expiring. There were more of the blue-skinned beast-demons that Xander had first killed, now arriving in pairs and attacking from different sides when possible. There were packs of smaller creatures, shaped like javelinas but the size of Dobermans, squealing and slavering and all but trampling one another in their drive to reach the humans. There were things that dropped from the ceilings, things that darted out from apertures in the walls, things waiting in pits that opened up ahead of them or sometimes almost under their feet.

Such numbers would easily have overwhelmed the rescue party if they had all come at once, but instead they arrived in increments sufficient to challenge but not bury the four men. Perhaps those were the rules (programming) of the ‘game’; perhaps the involution could generate or direct only so many at a time; perhaps the denizens were bound to certain segments of the overall construct, and could attack only within their own territory. For whatever reason, the humans fought and fought and fought, straining to meet the odds but never finding them too great.

Despite retrieving his ammunition whenever he could, despite the duplicate quarrels from his own deceased duplicate, Giles eventually ran out of anything to fire from the crossbow; he would have discarded the weapon as useless, but Ethan tried and succeeded at a new trick, loading the crossbow with his own power so that it would launch bolts of magical force. (Handy, that; too bad there was next to no chance such a technique would work outside the involution.) Xander, as his skill and experience grew, traded his axe for the sword Giles had brought for the moment he could no longer wield a distance weapon (and, mortifyingly, forgotten in those moments when he was trying to kill Nathan), and used the blade’s longer reach to practical and bloody effect.

Ethan had changed as well, perhaps from determination to distinguish himself from his new twin or perhaps in adjustment to the altered situation. Setting most other spellworks aside, he had focused his will into creating a force-light version of the _kattari_ of India (later misnamed the ‘fist blade’ or ‘Bundi dagger’), and fought alongside Giles with the foot-long weapon projecting from one hand and a fifteen-inch spell-shield from the other. His physical skill was less than that of the new enhanced Xander or even of Giles himself, but he met every attack with total commitment and utter ruthlessness. Sometimes Xander would leave his self-appointed rear-guard position to fight at Giles’s left while Ethan covered the right, the three of them working slaughter with an unexpected unity of purpose that far surpassed what they had managed when it was … well, only the three of them.

The greatest difference, however, was in Nathan. Already somewhat attuned to their surroundings by his essential nature, the others handling all the physical combat allowed him to concentrate solely on the mystical aspects, and his growth in power was even more dramatic than Ethan’s had been. He could detect, disarm, and dismiss spell-traps with easy virtuosity, nullifying or bypassing a dozen per minute; he could cast a paralysis spell on a single adversary, or a tanglefoot field on groups so that they moved as if mired in tar; he found a way to augment the glowballs with the green flame so that he could throw fireballs that would burst with a flare of white heat, enough to dispatch anything smaller than the massive ogres. Where Ethan had been able to float, Nathan could actually fly (albeit at no more than brisk walking speed), soaring above the fray to launch magical attacks at their foes from above while his cohorts fought below him.

“Fella,” Xander said to him after one such performance, still breathing hard from the labors of the clash just finished, “it’s too bad you _didn’t_ come with a mirror-Spock goatee: that, and a high-collar red cape, you’d have the whole Dr. Strange deal nailed solid.”

Ethan muttered something that sounded like ‘bloody ponce’. Giles could understand the sentiment without quite sharing it — though Nathan’s contribution was unquestionably invaluable, he did keep himself clear of direct danger while making it — but Xander just shrugged and said amiably, “Hey, if anybody would know, it’d be you.”

Already more than a bit precarious, the group dynamic had inevitably shifted with the addition of a fourth member, and Giles found himself struck by a perverse, surprising impulse to _defend_ Ethan. He quelled it with callous firmness; not only would such a thing be offensive in its very nature, they had more important things demanding their attention just now. For one: “I never thought to ask before,” he said to Nathan, “but is there any possibility of a … well, a game clock for this reality? a set period within which our task must be completed, before time runs out?”

Nathan frowned, thought for a moment, and then said, “Not feeling anything like a countdown, but it’s something to keep in mind. You weren’t exactly dragging your feet before you picked me up —” (Ah, yes, he’d know that from Ethan’s memories.) “— and we’ve moved along right smartly since then. If there’s a tempo here, I’d say we’re matching it and pushing past.”

“We’ve got one countdown you haven’t thought about,” Xander threw in. “I’m thirsty. Haven’t seen anything to drink in here — and I wouldn’t be crazy enough to touch it if there _were_ anything — but we’re gonna be dealing with dehydration before a lot longer. Wish we’d brought canteens.”

“Yes, quite right,” Giles replied, acknowledging and dismissing the point in the same moment. Xander had been exerting himself far more strenuously than the rest of them, but water would indeed be welcome now (in fact, he wished Xander hadn’t even mentioned it, because suddenly his own thirst was acute), but who would have ever suspected they’d be occupied long enough for such a thing to become a factor? All odds had been that they would succeed quickly or die quickly … and, since there was nothing they could do about it, there was no use in dwelling on it. “Another reason to move as quickly as we can. Ethan, Nathan: if we’ve held more or less to direction, we should be considerably closer than we were. Is there any way to do a seeking spell for something more like ourselves than like this environment?”

Both men frowned this time, but then there was another wave of attack, and everyone was too busy for talk. Nathan rose up to just below the ceiling and cast a tanglefoot, then began tossing fireballs; Giles fired the crossbow, cocked it and fired again, cocked and fired, cocked and fired, choosing his targets and moving more swiftly and fluidly than he ever could have done with an unenchanted weapon; Ethan formed the _kattari_ around his hand and waded in, slashing and stabbing and using the spell-shield to parry and divert and sometimes even strike edge-on; and Xander whirled his sword in a continuous unending flow of deadly motion, hewing through the creatures ahead of and around him, seemingly every blow a killing-stroke. They had done this before, again and again, and the progressive increase in the number of foes coming at them had given them time to get very good at it, always moving forward as they fought so that opposition might slow their progress but not halt it.

Despite the honed lethality they could bring to bear, the sheer press of bodies meant it was minutes before they could slow down, kill the last few, and regroup. “Seeking spell,” Ethan gasped, sweat running down his face as his chest heaved. “Don’t know, Ripper; it’d be one thing if we were out in the real world with the proper materials, but in _here —”_

“Too right,” Nathan agreed. “I mean, ‘in here’ isn’t a problem for me, but you don’t just cast something like that _ex nihilo._ It needs something for focus, something of _hers,_ and unless you’ve been carrying around a lock of her hair you haven’t told us about, we’ve got sweet Fanny Adams to work with.”

Giles put his foot on the neck of one of the flyers, still squirming on the concrete floor, and used the axe to sever it from the body. “You’re two versions of the same person,” he told the Raynes. “One from outside, one from here. Can’t you use the similarities between you to isolate the difference, and then the difference to tune in on Jenny’s location?”

Ethan raised an eyebrow, looking Nathan over dubiously. “You know, we _might_ be able to do something like that. Only …”

“Only we’d have to work together,” Nathan finished. “Because we’re both big on that kind of thing.”

Ethan’s smile was hard-edged. “Couldn’t be at all because you’re not up to the challenge, could it?”

Nathan smiled back just as nastily. “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine. Just see if you can keep up.”

“Uh-huh,” Xander said. “Or maybe we could go check out that door over there.”

They broke off to look at him, as did Giles. “Why?” Giles asked him. “Is there something particular about it?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure I can see a red light on it,” Xander said, gesturing toward the distant door at the end of the long hallway. “That’s new, and new is worth giving a look-see.”

Giles peered ahead, and sure enough he could barely make out a tiny red light on the door Xander had indicated. “All stay alert,” he cautioned, almost certainly unnecessarily, and together they advanced to the door in question. No new enemies appeared in their path, which was quite the opposite of reassuring, but …

The door, when they reached it, was unlike any they had thus far encountered. Those had been either generic metal with ordinary handles, or had been sealed with symbols that had to be unlocked. This one, first, had an industrial magnetic keypad (the source of the red light they’d seen), and second, had a small window of the type that embedded wire mesh into the glass. Giles tried to look through the glass while the others took up guard positions; the room beyond was unlit, however, and there wasn’t enough illumination from the hallway to reach in very far. “Ethan,” he said. “If you would?”

“Right, right,” Ethan said, moving up next to him. He formed a glowball, steering it up to the window, but the light merely reflected from the glass. “Bugger,” Ethan muttered. “All right, hold on, how about …?” A moment’s concentration, and the next glowball formed _inside_ the room, drifting forward as Ethan tried to mentally steer it. It didn’t work, the ball moved a few yards and then settled to the floor, glowing for a few more seconds before fading out.

Still, that had given a bit of help. “I think,” Giles said huskily, then stopped to swallow. “I think there might be someone huddled in that leftmost corner. I think … protruding from a clump of shadow there … I think it may have been a foot. Perhaps even a woman’s foot.”

“Company!” Xander called, breaking in on the sudden surge of treacherous hope. “If this is the jackpot, here come the characters who don’t want us to collect. Battle stations, people!”

It required no huge effort of will for Giles to pull himself from the window, but he still didn’t like doing it. “Nathan, check the door for traps,” he ordered, turning. “Ethan, watch him.”

Nathan’s laugh came even as Giles felled one of the advancing wave with a crossbow shot. “After all we’ve been through, you still don’t trust me?”

“More than I should, perhaps,” Giles replied crisply, already sighting in on his next target. “But you’ll not get _carte blanche_ from me any time soon.”

He had the impression Nathan had attempted some needling retort, but couldn’t spare the attention to notice. The wall of creatures coming at them … there were no greater numbers crowded into the front ranks than they’d faced before, but the depth of the oncoming press seemed all but endless. He fell into a rhythm, picking off those a bit farther back and letting Xander deal with the nearer ones and the flyers. He was currently the only one of them wielding a distance weapon, and only Ethan’s enhancement of the crossbow — easy draw, fast reload, self-replenishing ammunition — allowed him any hope of keeping up. With an awareness sharpened by the experience of the last several hours, he saw that the balance was about to break. “Nathan,” he called, still sighting and firing. “Give the door over to Ethan, we need support!”

The man was with him in seconds, calling up magic before even bothering to speak: a searing line of flame for those almost within reach of them, followed by the ever-useful tanglefoot field to slow the advance, then fireballs and paralysis bolts. “Bloody hell,” Nathan observed when the most acute danger had been suppressed. “They _are_ getting close!”

“Final phase,” Xander panted, sword at rest for just a moment; toward the last, he hadn’t even been fighting to kill, just to hold back the attack till more potent force could be brought to bear. “This is the last level; we either get through, or they just keep piling on till we’re plowed under.”

“It very much appears so,” Giles agreed, and shot down one of the flyers; he’d been leaving those for Xander — too quick to make promising targets, whereas deft sword-work could bring them down handily enough — but he’d gone with instinct and his aim was on, the creature dropped screeching and convulsing. “How goes it with the door?”

“It’s tricky,” Nathan answered. He, too, was interspersing words with murderous action, reinforcing the tanglefoot and laying down another line of flame. “I was making real progress —”

“No, you weren’t!” Ethan snapped from behind them.

“— but that one has been loaded with the works. Shields and traps layered into the door, walls, ceiling, floors … we could work our way through, but it’d take time —” A barrage of fireballs, nearly a dozen in quick sequence. “— that we’re clearly not going to bloody _have,_ so I’ve been feeling my way through the little fripperies in the keypad.” Nathan wasn’t wasting effort on flight now, all his attention was taken up with direct action against the enemies pressing in on them, but he spoke while casting. “No traps _there,_ far as I can tell, but it just won’t work without the correct code, and we haven’t the faintest of what that might be. Who expects sodding _vampires_ to use key-codes? Against the natural order, if you ask me …”

“Seven-digit code,” Ethan called back to them. “Got that much, but I haven’t been able to finesse anything else. Any suggestions? because I’m totally sodding blank up here.”

“Suggestions, you say?” Nathan produced something new, a neon-bright pinwheel that he sent caroming through the assault wave, bouncing from one to another and inflicting multiple wounds at every contact. “It could be _anything,_ there’s no sense to see or work out, that’s the whole point of a key-code. We’ll go under here long before we’ve tried every buggering irrelevancy we can think of, it’s just utterly bleeding random.”

“But it’s still a game,” Xander insisted without looking around. Even with Giles and Nathan working together, enough were getting close that he was having to carry a solid share of the fighting. “We _have_ to think of it as a game, with rules, ’cause if there are no rules we’re screwed regardless.” He chopped down one of the blue-skinned beast-demons, taking three blows to finish the thing. “What seven-letter code would have any kind of meaning to a magic-mojo game designer?”

It wasn’t the simplest thing, to puzzle at such a question while simultaneously devoting full commitment to immediate combat, but Giles made the attempt, physical resistance was just delaying the inevitable and only intellect (or luck, but who would trust to luck in these circumstances?) would save them. “Angelus: ANGELUS is seven letters long —”

“Yeah, so is UPYOURS,” Xander gasped … then, “Oh, hell, what’s _that?”_

‘That’ was something they hadn’t seen before, looming up above the horde ahead of it: an ogre, but larger than the others by twenty per cent, and a bright orange-red in hue. The stupendous muscles were banded in patches of glowing light, as of pools of magma shifting under the skin, and small gouts of flame flickered off it now and then. Giles took careful aim and fired directly into its left eye … and the creature bellowed and clamped a washtub-sized hand to its face, but the magical force-bolt rebounded, somehow solidifying into an actual quarrel, sizzled, and then vanished in a puff of flame and smoke.

“A  _fire ogre?”_ Nathan blurted. “They’re _inventing_ new things to throw at us now!”

Giles steadied and fired again, trying for the other eye, while Nathan shot forth one paralysis blast after another, apparently feeling (as did Giles) that fireballs would probably serve only to strengthen this fresh enemy. Xander was everywhere, leaping and laying about himself with the sword, trying by speed and desperation and sheer total savagery to compensate for the attention the others couldn’t spare for their more mundane foes. And Ethan was saying something, Giles caught a fragment: “— only numbers, it’s not alphanumeric, there’s only _numbers_ to choose from. What kind of bloody seven-digit **number** would an insane psychic vampire slag choose to plug into a scenario like this?”

 _“Cover me!”_ Xander shrieked, turning and pushing through them back to the door. “I’ve got this, cover me, _DO IT NOW!”_ Ethan stumbled out, startled and bewildered, but in the next instant he had summoned up the light- _kattari_ and was slashing at the front ranks of the advancing wall, face white and set.

Giles was too busy to feel more than the faintest flicker of wonder and incomprehension, but behind him he could hear the keypad chime as Xander began punching in numbers. This wasn’t the generic quasi-robotic sound of standard tone-codes, it was actually almost melodic, like the fragment of a tune, he _knew_ that tune, but what —? and Ethan shot flames from both hands to ignite creatures close enough to reach out and seize them, and there was a loud beep and then the mechanical _clack!_ of a lock disengaging, and “Inside, inside, got it, inside!” Xander shouted, and Giles fired a last time at the fire-ogre (now, finally, beginning to stagger under the sustained fusillade it had been taking, now when it didn’t _matter_ anymore) and lunged through the opened door, Ethan and Nathan instantly behind him, and Xander slammed the door again before any of their foes could move to follow.

In the last, desperate few minutes Giles had been so intent on the present necessity that he’d lost sight of the farther goal. Now, inside and shielded from their besiegers and granted a moment’s quiet, it came back to him. He looked around for the shadowed form he’d seen before, starting toward it —

He could never have said why he turned back, but that warning instinct was too slow and too late. Nathan was coming at him, face twisted into a snarl of triumph, a  _kattari_ appearing in his own hand and drawn back to strike. Astonishingly, Ethan was throwing himself between the two of them, one hand out to push Giles back and the spell-shield flickering up around the other, but it was still unformed and the angle was wrong, he’d be split open in the next half-second and then Giles the following moment, and the point of Xander’s sword burst out of Nathan’s chest, Xander had struck from behind, extending himself so far in the thrust that he fell full-length on the gritty floor. Nathan let out an awful gasping wail, blood surging from his mouth; he toppled half-sideways, the _kattari_ gouging a furrow in the concrete, scrabbled for a hold, for control, for anything, and then his eyes went empty and his face slack, blood still running from the open mouth.

Giles was mute, stunned, staring. Xander was scrambling back up, not trusting that the danger was over. Ethan had caught his balance, and he looked down now at his dead double, his face fixed in a sneer far more intent than his usual confident smirk. “Well, now,” he drawled. “I suppose this would be a good time for me to say _Scream thy last scream_ … but you already did that, didn’t you?” He leaned forward, spat on the corpse, and added, “Wanker.”

“I …” Giles blinked, shook himself. “Th–… thank you. Both of you.”

The answering smile was thin and sardonic, typical Ethan. “Come on, Ripper, I couldn’t let anyone _else_ double-cross you, could I? You know I’ve never been one to share my toys.” He nodded past Giles. “I believe you had some business over there, before you were so … _predictably_ interrupted?”

Giles swung back toward that dark corner, his mind already whirling with apprehension at war with hope. Was there yet another trap awaiting them? was it Jenny? was she _alive?_ “Light,” he commanded, and as Ethan obligingly called up a glowball, he steeled himself and stepped forward.


	5. Chapter 5

epilogue

“I don’t want to be premature about any of this,” Jenny said to him, “but I’ve had some time to think about it … and I’m pretty sure that, yes, I’m alive.”

Giles smiled at her. “That, er … that was my conclusion as well.” He cleared his throat. “Once we’d ascertained as much, and that you weren’t, weren’t ‘booby-trapped’ in any way, and got you freed from the shackles … well, after that, it turned out to be almost childishly simple not only to exit the involution but to do so in such a manner as to put us outside the factory, still in daylight, so that we needn’t deal with whatever Drusilla — or Angelus, operating independently — might have arranged for us.”

Jenny was shaking her head slowly. “You came for a showdown with two master vampires,” she said, “and finished out the whole business without ever facing either of them? Or even _seeing_ them?”

“They weren’t the point of it all,” Giles observed mildly. “You were. Once I had you … well, sod the lot of them.”

Jenny laughed. “Oo-ooh, _language.”_ The smile relaxed a bit, and she said, “I do have a few more questions, though.”

Giles nodded. “Hardly surprising.”

“First, how did Xander know the door code?”

Giles’s shoulders slumped, just the least bit. “He guessed it. His intuition is so … so bloody _preposterous_ that I’m beginning to think there has to be some supernatural aspect to it. When I asked him how he knew, why it would even occur to him, he just grinned at me and said —” Giles’s voice shifted, and he made a dreadful, nasal attempt at reproducing the accent of an adolescent American male. “— he said, ‘It can’t _all_ be Pink Floyd, sometimes you just gotta go with Tommy Tutone.’ ”

“Tommy Tut–…” Jenny stopped. “You mean, the door code was —?”

“Eight six seven five three oh nine,” Giles confirmed, his expression once again showing his pain at being saved by popular culture.

“A phone number,” Jenny said, understanding. “Seven digits. And my name. That _does_ make sense … I guess.” She looked up. “But then the next question. How was Xander — or Rayne, for that matter — fast enough to stop other-Ethan when he tried to kill you? How did they _know?”_

“Ah,” Giles said. “Yes. Again, I asked. Xander’s explanation was, ‘I just kept remembering the story about the frog and the scorpion.’ ”

“Got it,” Jenny said. “ ‘It was just his nature.’ And Rayne?”

“Ethan,” Giles said, “simply told me he knew better than to trust _any_ version of himself.”

“Always a reliable bet,” Jenny agreed. Then the corners of her mouth turned downward. “And now we owe him.”

“More than I can possibly express,” Giles replied, the bare words carrying more meaning than any soaring speech would have done.

Jenny drew a deep breath. “The next time I see him,” she said, “I intend to punch him in the nose as hard as I can. And then tell him his drinks are on me for, oh, the rest of his life.”

Giles was nodding, his smile rueful. “We can never trust him,” he said. “Never. But, as he intended, I am in his debt.”

“Which I guess goes for me, too.” Jenny settled back again in the armchair. “So … it’s really over.”

“Yes,” he said. “It truly is.” The actual final resolution, of course, would not come till Drusilla and Angelus were obliterated from existence, but that didn’t need to be said just now.

“Happy ending for everybody,” Jenny said. Her voice was beginning to go vague again; Giles was himself exhausted, how much worse must it be for her? “And the sun comes out, and the flowers bloom, and birds are singing, and you _know_ there are violins —”

“A full string quartet,” Giles said with a nod. “Assuming, of course, that an entire symphony orchestra would be, er, excessive.”

“Judgment call,” Jenny pronounced. “Too tired, we’ll get back to that. But however you figure it, happy ending.” She yawned enormously. “I’ll take it.”

He smiled at her, again taking her hands in his own and again choosing to leave certain matters left unspoken. Happy ending, yes, more than he’d have dared to dream of hoping for. It was not unalloyed, however. There were … elements, issues to be considered. He had her back, and that was more important (by a quantum level!) than anything else. In the process, however, certain things had happened … and other things had made themselves known, things it wouldn’t have occurred to him to suspect.

Things he hadn’t told Jenny. Things he didn’t know if he _could_ tell her.

First, about Ethan. Giles had known that Ethan’s feelings for him (and his for Ethan) were complex, contradictory, conflicting. Snarled with old affection and old arguments and old disappointments and old betrayals, that first heady, bright companionship buried under roiled compost layers of anger and jealousy and bitterness. He had known that Ethan’s twisted imperatives _would_ move the man to enter the fray at Giles’s side if the proposal were made in the right way, that Ethan readily would risk his own beloved skin for the prospect of a triumph over Ripper. That final turn, however, Ethan throwing himself — unprepared, unthinking, automatic — between Giles and the threat of death … that had been unexpected, unforeseen, un _conceived,_ and Giles had not yet begun to try to work out what it might signify about the man he had so long despised.

Then there was Xander. Giles had already known that — however he might lack the physical prowess to fulfill it — the boy was a hero in his essence. He had been surprised but not astonished when events showed that Xander could also be a warrior. He had by no means suspected that the young man — gawky, clownish, self-deprecating, bottomlessly courageous — was also so solidly possessed of that cast of character that could make one a killer. And not just of demons: the three doppelgängers had been mystical constructs, true, but they had been shaped like men, looked like men, moved and acted like men … ‘Nathan’ had _talked_ like a man, like a roguish, humorous, half-charming and half-smarmy Ethan Rayne, enough that Giles (who certainly knew better) had actually found himself warming to him …

… and Xander had killed all three of them. Without passion, pity, hesitation, or remorse, killed them the instant they constituted a threat.

He was still Xander, still the boy Giles had known for over a year now. There was more to him than had been apparent, however, and it had yet to be determined just what that might mean.

Finally, Giles himself. He had already known that he loved Jenny Calendar, known — though he certainly hadn’t expected to have it put so extravagantly to proof! — that he was willing to risk his own life, or give it, for her sake. He had _not_ known, however, but had learned, that he was just as coldly willing to imperil the lives of others …

…

… but not Buffy’s life.

He had known it was a trap, it had been all but proclaimed as a trap … for Buffy. And he had refused to send her into it. Not out of town with her mother, not frustratingly incommunicado, no, he simply had not called her. Had hidden it from her. Putting his own life in the balance — and Ethan’s, and Xander’s, and _Jenny’s_ — rather than expose Buffy to a trap designed expressly for her. The world needed the Slayer, but it needed her for the _fight,_ not to be sealed away from danger. He knew that … but he had protected her this time, even at hazard to others, and Giles was not at all sure what that said about him.

Jenny stirred in the armchair, and Giles released her hands. “Whoa,” she said, blinking. “Started to fade out there.” She looked at him, eyes searching. “Buffy’s watching this place, you say?”

“With a bit of support from the others,” Giles confirmed, “but, yes, the Slayer is of course the most potent force in place for our protection. You can rest assured that you are as safe here as can be humanly — or superhumanly — arranged.”

“Good,” she said. “Good to know.” She yawned again. “I think … I think I can rest now. Finally.”

“Excellent.” Giles pushed himself up from his own chair. “I’ll help you to the upstairs bedroom … and, and of course I’ll set myself up on the couch down here …”

“Rupert.” For just a moment, the old, teasing smile was back on her face. “Whatever tomorrow may be like, right now I’m wiped out, the _only_ thing I’m interested in is sleep … but if I’m going to be in your bed, I want you in there with me. Got it?”

“I …” He cleared his throat. “I will defer to your wishes. As it seems I always do.” He shook his head. “You really are a most demanding woman.”

“Get used to it.” They started for the stairs, she testing her strength while letting him support her. “Okay, get on this side of me, I can hold onto the rail with my other hand —”

Much had changed, and those changes would have to be recognized and assessed and dealt with. That, however, was a task for tomorrow. For the moment, Rupert Giles was more than content to accept the bounties of today.

   
end


End file.
